The Anatomy of an Acquisition Editor’s Decision
The Anatomy of an Acquisition Editor’s Decision Authors often picture an acquisitions editor as someone who reads a manuscript, falls in love with it, and buys it. That happens. But it’s a small piece of a much bigger decision that editors are quietly running every time a proposal crosses their desk. Here’s roughly what an […]
Not Every Editorial Pass Means the Book Is the Problem
Not Every Editorial Pass Means the Book Is the Problem I want to push back on an assumption a lot of first-time authors carry into this business: that a rejection from a publisher means the manuscript failed. Sometimes it does. But in my experience representing nonfiction authors, plenty of strong books get passed on for […]
A Publisher Passed on Your Book. Now What?
A Publisher Passed on Your Book. Now What? The first pass always stings. I’ve delivered enough of them to authors to know there’s no version of “an editor decided not to acquire your book” that lands softly. But how you respond to that first no often determines whether the book eventually sells. The mistake I […]
The Hybrid Publishing Confusion
The Hybrid Publishing Confusion I want to clear up a mix-up that costs authors real money and real disappointment every year. “Hybrid author” and “hybrid publisher” sound like the same thing. They are not, and confusing the two has burned more first-time authors than almost any other misunderstanding in this business. A hybrid author is […]
The Memoir Market Just Cooled Off. That Is Not the Whole Story.
The Memoir Market Just Cooled Off. That Is Not the Whole Story. Memoir and biography sales dropped about 7 percent in 2025, according to Circana BookScan, the industry’s main tracker of print sales. If you have a memoir manuscript in a drawer right now, that number probably just made your stomach drop a little. I […]
The Advance Gap Nobody Puts in the Press Release
The Advance Gap Nobody Puts in the Press Release Publishing loves a good advance headline. Seven figures for a debut, a bidding war between five houses, the kind of number that gets forwarded around writing groups for a week. What almost never gets forwarded is the number underneath it, the one that tells you what […]
What Full-Time Authors Actually Take Home
What Full-Time Authors Actually Take Home I want to talk about money for a minute, because publishing has a habit of dressing up hard numbers in soft language, and writers deserve the real picture before they quit a day job over a book deal. The Authors Guild’s most recent income survey found that the median […]
The Rejection Math Nobody Tells You About
The Rejection Math Nobody Tells You About Every week somebody sends me a message wanting to know what they did wrong. They queried twenty agents, got twenty rejections, and now they are convinced the book is broken. Usually it isn’t. Usually they just don’t understand the math they are up against. Here is the number […]
What Actually Happens After “The Call”
What Actually Happens After “The Call” Every writer imagines the call. An agent reads the full manuscript, loves it, and phones to offer representation. It is a genuinely great moment, and it deserves the celebration writers give it. What almost nobody explains well is what happens in the months right after, because the call is […]
The Quiet Disappearance of the Mid-List Author
The Quiet Disappearance of the Mid-List Author There is a slower, quieter crisis in publishing that gets a lot less attention than debut bidding wars or celebrity book deals, and I think it deserves more airtime. Author income in this country has been in a long, steady decline. The Authors Guild’s income surveys have tracked […]